The north of the Xiaoice River in late winter and early spring still seems to be like midwinter, including the Yellow River and even the ice on the river surface in many places has no signs of melting, and there is no big accident when the mighty team crosses the Yellow River north to the Cangzhou area. Although there were many accidents due to the crushing of the ice surface by the cars and horses in front of them, fortunately, there were no problems after all.

However, compared to most of those who marched at a modest pace, the recruits, who were happy to live a worry-free life and were selected for the new barracks instead of the auxiliary battalions, were once again feeling the pressure like never before.

From time to time, someone was punished for standing naked in the cold wind, and the unique scars brought by the cloth whip on their bodies gradually turned blue and purple. Others have been executed by capital for serious violations of military discipline and even for inciting discontent.

After a few days of harsh life, when training in the queue, and even in the daily life, the recruits in the camp showed even the slightest slackness or even gossip, and some people were directly subjected to various corporal punishments, including waterboarding or a thousand tail cloth whips.

Because almost no one can not make a single mistake in even basic queue training and even daily life in the first few days, so in just about five days of rigorous military training, almost every teenager has some scars on his body. Many people's faces are swollen and swollen from the swelling, but it still does not subside.

Under the intense pressure and the harsh requirements that no one had ever seen even in the mines, there was finally a mutiny in one squadron, because there were many teenagers from military families in this squadron, and they also had some understanding of the rules in the barracks. Although people have heard of the withholding of military salaries or the use of soldiers as hard labor, they have never heard of a barracks where the requirements are so strict at every moment.

The result is of course self-evident, in this unique team at the feet of the Son of Heaven, according to the law and discipline in the army mutiny is regarded as rebellion, after getting Xiao Xuan's tacit approval, hundreds of people except for a few meritorious informants were all executed in public and affected the relevant families.

The growing resentment that had accumulated was finally suppressed in the face of the high pressure of capital punishment and violence. Xiao Xuan, of course, was also aware of this or that violence in the recruit camp during his daily patrols on the march. Although this kind of violent oppression of recruits is still to detect too many phenomena of abuse of power for personal gain or unfair rewards and punishments, after all, the officers and soldiers of the Guards Battalion and the Brave Guard Battalion who are responsible for the management of each recruit battalion are also selected by the entire team after a year or so, but Xiao Xuan still feels a slight difference between the teenagers from the lower classes of this era and modern people from the future like himself.

Xiao Xuan was born in a relatively closed and conservative place, and when he was a child, he did not encounter so-called "domestic violence" or so-called corporal punishment by teachers at home or at school. However, in the vast majority of modern society, even if it is school violence at home or from teachers, there are often principles or bottom lines of one kind or another. There are few regular, truly painful and unbearable punishments, and more often than not, there are very few truly "unjustified" corporal punishments. In this era, especially those children from lower classes, harsh corporal punishment and beating are simply regarded as a normal phenomenon. He did not have a trace of "reasoning bottom line" that he still had in the training of recruits after being influenced by humanitarianism in modern times.

I don't know why, Xiao Xuan still has no intention of fundamentally reversing this phenomenon after all, so his successful experience seems to show that strict army management is beneficial to the rapid formation of combat effectiveness and obedience. In particular, the teenagers of this era often did not experience the discipline of Chinese-style campus education when they were young, and if they only followed the so-called "military training" that was so tolerant in later generations, without a trace of ruthless standards, it would be impossible for these people to at least have the combat effectiveness that meets the requirements in just one month or less.

Of course, in order to prevent the ranks of the various recruit battalions in the capital from becoming "veteran soldiers" before they reached the capital, Xiao Xuan still warned the officers of the battalions of the recruit battalions at the provisional military meeting that they should not be afraid of strict punishments and requirements, but they must ensure that the general direction of taking combat effectiveness and discipline as the goal remains unchanged. If corporal punishment is carried out solely for venting or for fun, the presiding officer will also be punished with capital punishment.

In this way, about ten days of strict and demanding parade and barracks life training during the march finally made most of the young officers and soldiers in the new barracks seem to have a sense of prohibition and forbiddenness, and not many of them dare to talk to each other in private. In the days that followed, training in the use of firearms, bomb throwing, earthwork training, and other training in actual combat skills began to be carried out in an orderly manner.

In about a month and a half, the family background of the Guards Battalion and the Brave Guard Battalion has also been strengthened a lot compared to the past. The auxiliaries in the team made a total of more than 5,000 new firearms, and these firearms and related ammunition were also distributed to the newly established recruit camps without hesitation. In order to maximize the efficiency of these ten-pound firearms when there is a temporary lack of firearms. These heavy guns, which were originally used as individual firearms, have been changed to "double weapons" in the new training standards, and in order to further enhance the reloading speed, they are usually reloaded by two teenagers in conjunction with each other. In this way, many junior officers and soldiers are not very proficient in the reloading process, and they can also fire at a rate of fire that is not too low. After several rounds of test firing during the march, about one-tenth of the recruits were selected to act as shooters by about one-tenth of the people who were least afraid of firearms, had the strongest memory, and had the most reliable understanding of the shooting essentials, so that the projectors of each recruit battalion had reached about 20 percent.

Of course, this still did not seem to be enough, and many of the newly created explosive shells began to be handed over to these recruits for safekeeping. Because of the relatively rigorous training, such as carrying out loading and shooting training under the interference of live fire, or conducting blasting and assault training at close range when a large number of people are assembled, dozens of firearms-related training accidents occurred in less than half a month or so, and nearly 100 teenagers were killed or injured in this dangerous training. However, the various training and casualty accidents that followed each day were rapidly reduced.

When the vanguard of the mighty contingent was approaching the capital, after about a month of marching and training, about 45,000 young recruits from the 90 battalions after being eliminated and dismantled, together with 20,000 auxiliary soldiers whose discipline had improved, temporarily formed about 18 new combat battalions, with an average number of about 3,000 or 4,000 men per battalion.

(End of chapter)